(372) Adam Sklute, Artistic Director of Ballet West, on Willam Christensen's 'The Nutcracker'
On today's episode of 'Conversations On Dance', we are joined by the Artistic Director of Ballet West, Adam Sklute. Adam sits down with us to tell us about his journey from dancer to director, the positive changes he's enacted since he took over the role of Artistic Director in 2007 and to give us a deep look into the company's production of Willam Christensen's 'Nutcracker', the very first full length production of the holiday classic ever performed in America. Ballet West will be performing 'The Nutcracker' at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC from Nov 22-26 and in Salt Lake City from Dec 8-27. Tickets for the Kennedy Center can be purchased at kennedy-center.org, while Ballet West's hometown performances can be found at balletwest.org.
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TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was generated automatically. It’s accuracy may vary.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:00:00]:
I'm Rebecca King Ferraro.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:00:55]:
And I'm Michael Sean Breeden. And you're listening to Conversations on Dance. On today's episode of Conversations on Dance, we are joined by the artistic director of Ballet West, Adam SCLU. Adam sits down with us to tell us about his journey from dancer to director, the positive changes he's enacted since he took over the role of artistic director in 2007, and to give us a deep look into the company's production of Willem Christensen's Nutcracker, the very first full length production of the holiday classic ever performed in America. Bally west will be performing the Nutcracker at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. From November 22 through the 26th and in Salt Lake City from December 8 through the 27th. Tickets for the Kennedy Center can be purchased at kennedycenter.org while Ballet West’s hometown performances can be found at balletwest.org.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:01:46]:
Good morning, Adam. Thank you so much for joining us. We've long wanted to have you on the show, and now you're here, and we get to talk about the upcoming trip to the Kennedy Center with The Nutcracker. But since we have not had you on yet, we'd love to hear a bit about your own personal background. Perhaps we could start with a little bit about your own performing career.
Adam Sklute [00:02:05]:
Oh, my goodness. Well, my career came almost by accident. I didn't actually start performing and dancing until I was 16 and a half, almost 17. Wow. Yeah. I had been doing theater in high school, and someone said, oh, you should go to classical ballet classes. And I started and just fell in love immediately. I had, from a very young age, sang, painted, did some sports, doing all these things.
Adam Sklute [00:02:39]:
I wasn't very good at any of it because I just didn't focus on it. And all of a sudden, here came classical ballet. And it was everything that I wanted all wrapped up in one. So I started headstrong right away. I started a little studio called Berkeley Ballet Theater in Berkeley, California. It was run by a woman named Sally Streets, who is a former New York City ballet soloist and the mother of prima ballerina. And very early on, she sent me over to Oakland ballet. I had had maybe four months of classical training and they were performing the American premiere of Ballet Bronislevana Jinska's Lenos, which had never been done in America before by the company at the Oakland Ballet.
Adam Sklute [00:03:28]:
And they needed someone there, extra men. So she sent me over and I met with all of them. And I met Irina Najinska Branaslava's daughter. Very tiny little woman. She was staging the ballet. She looked up in my eyes and she said, you're going to make a very good groom. I can see it in your eyes. Well, I only knew that this was a ballet about a wedding, and I thought, oh my gosh, I'm doing the groom.
Adam Sklute [00:03:51]:
That's like a leading role. And oh my goodness, my gracious. Well, if anyone had seen Nijinska's version of Leynos, the bride and the groom actually don't do any dancing, it's everybody else who dances around them. The groom just has to stand there and look terrified. So of course she saw my eyes because I was a natural for that. I could stand there and look terrified. But I was hooked right away. I then went on for a brief summer at SAB and then got snatched up.
Adam Sklute [00:04:19]:
I was taking classes also at the Joffrey School in New York, and Robert Joffrey saw me there and sent me to his workshops. And it was all very, very fast. And within less than two years, I was in Joffrey II, and I was one of the last two dancers robert Joffrey picked for his company out of Joffrey II. And he was a very funny little man. He had a very powerful energy. And he looked at me and he said, adam, I'm going to take you into my company against my better judgment, but you're smart, so I know you're going to succeed. Now you just have to learn how to dance. And that was my entire beginning of my career.
Adam Sklute [00:05:02]:
I spent twelve years, 14 years with the main company at the Joffrey Ballet, moving from New York and then to Chicago. And when the company moved to Chicago is when they asked me to start taking on some more leadership stuff. And that was my performing career. And I danced many wonderful roles, and it has given me a love and an insight to how I want the future of dance to look.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:05:26]:
Also, I love know something that strikes me right away is Rebecca, we've talked to a few leaders, artistic leaders recently that all got late starts, and I'm wondering if you think that's actually something that fed positively into any sort of leadership aspirations. You you maybe it gave you a chance to absorb other skills that you would not have had otherwise if you started ballet when you were eight and a half. How do you feel your late start helped?
Adam Sklute [00:05:54]:
No, I think that's absolutely right. Certainly in my case, I will not deny now, although I never wanted to admit it, that I think I wanted to be an artistic director before I wanted to be a dancer, but I had to be a dancer if I was going to be an artistic director of a ballet company. I remember very early on, and maybe 17 or not even 18, I saw the Joffrey Ballet. My parents took me to see it in San Francisco, and I got their new play, Bill. It was their 25th anniversary program, and I scoured through it and read every little detail about it, about Mr. Joffrey, about Mr. Arpino, about each individual dancer. And I realized that that type of oversight and organization was something that was inspiring to me right away.
Adam Sklute [00:06:36]:
So I think you're absolutely right.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:06:38]:
So interesting. So how do you think, then, even though it may not have been in front of mind while you were dancing, how were you then trying to absorb and take in some of these leaders that you were working with? How were you absorbing all this information to then kind of put it in the back of your mind and then use it moving forward as an artistic director?
Adam Sklute [00:06:56]:
Well, I think I was really fascinated always by everyone's individual process, choreographers processes, repetitor and stagers processes, historical work, and what that meant to how it compared to the future. I came from a family of intellectuals, so I think I could not have not approached my own performing career with a slightly intellectual bent. And so the history, how the history, how the new works reflected the history, where people's influences were, was fascinating to me from day one. And so I was constantly aware of that, constantly involved in that in my mind. And so, yeah, that was really, then, something that I could then take into my own position in leadership.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:07:41]:
Right. I think it's interesting to me that I know that historical remountings of works that are maybe lost or getting to that sort of historical truth, if there is some, is a big part of Ballet West, and it's so cool that your first thing you ever did was this historical remounting of it. I did that version in Boston Ballet, and even though it had been done elsewhere, it still felt like, oh, wow, this is such a weird, amazing, mind bending, time travel moment. It's just so different and special and unique. So I think that that's cool to me that you were already immersed in that side of things that would later impact who you are as a director.
Adam Sklute [00:08:27]:
Very much right off the bat. I mean, it's fascinating in a work like Lenos. Yeah. Whether it was always enjoyable to dance or not enjoyable to dance, there never was a question that it was groundbreaking that we were involved with something bigger than ourselves and something important, and then, really, as time went on, to understand, I mean, first of all, an example of early choreography by a woman choreographer, a woman designer. I mean, this wasn't happening that often, and nowadays, we don't even consider it that much, but there were a lot of very prominent women in classical ballet who were producing things, and that always fascinated me as well. So there are just so many aspects of it as we look into the future, because I always look at the history as a guide to what is coming up into the future.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:09:13]:
Yeah, we're going to dive more into your process as an artistic director, but first we'd like to hear how the job position came to you and what made you well, obviously you were eager to accept it because you had your eye on this. But tell us a little bit about that.
Adam Sklute [00:09:28]:
Well, it's actually quite complicated. I spent twelve years with the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago. After I had stopped dancing, they had asked me to start taking on some leadership roles. Early on, I started organizing schedules, really, as I was hard work phasing out of my dancing career. I was organizing schedules. And little by little, then I started running rehearsals and became an assistant ballet master, what we now call rehearsal directors. And then the then director co founder, Gerald Arpino. Mr.
Adam Sklute [00:10:00]:
Arpino asked me to start assisting with casting, and then little by little that became assisting with programming. And I moved from assistant rehearsal director to rehearsal director, to director, assistant director to associate director. And what was very interesting is I felt like those twelve years in Chicago were my college, my graduate school, and my internship all put together. In 2007, the board of the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago had announced that Mr. Arpino was going to be moving to the position of emeritus. And they had informed me, as well as a number of other people from the organization, that we were going to be candidates in a search for a new artistic director, but that they were going on an international search. And I felt nervous, worried about that, concerned. I mean, I loved The Joffrey Valet at this point.
Adam Sklute [00:10:58]:
I had spent almost 24 years there, and I thought that I was the right person to be able to help run that company. But at the very same time, I received a little one line email from a search consultant who said, would you consider presenting your resume for consideration for the artistic directorship of Ballet West in Salt Lake City, Utah? I had obviously heard of Ballet West. In fact, the paths of many of the dancers had crossed with me. I had worked with a number of them at the Joffrey School and even back in Oakland and all of these other things prior to so I knew about its very strong and powerful history. But at first I was like, no, I'm never going to leave the Joffrey Ballet. This is going to be my home. But I thought, but it would not be a bad idea to at least see what your market value is. It was that palace, really, that I started, and I had never been to Salt Lake City except for being through the airport once.
Adam Sklute [00:11:57]:
And so I took a phone interview. I took another phone interview. They asked me for another phone interview with a big group. And then finally they asked me to come out to work with the dancers, coach the dancers, meet the board, meet the staff, do all of these things. And I whittled my thumbs and heamed and Hot and said no. And my husband actually finally just got on an email and he sent my dates and application for them to go on out. I wasn't going to do it, but I did. I got there.
Adam Sklute [00:12:29]:
I got here and I slowly, while I was working with it, fell in love. I fell in love with the company. I fell in love with the city. I thought I saw endless potential. Endless potential. And I realized on that visit then and there, that if I were to stay at the Joffrey, I would probably just be slavishly holding on to an old vision. And that what that company actually needed as much as what I needed was change and a new vision. And I saw a path of what I could do here at Ballet West.
Adam Sklute [00:13:09]:
And so I left that three, four day interview process, whatever it was, hoping and hoping and hoping that they would offer me the position. And a week later they did. And yeah, I've been here since March of 2007. So it's my 16th year as artistic director, and the company is growing strong. It's been a long, hard road, but we are now at a budget size of top ten companies in America. We have had three years of record breaking sales and subscription growth at a time when things have been very challenging for Ballet companies around the country. Our school has nearly 1000 students with four different campuses, three satellites, and all of these things were things they asked me to help build and grow. And so I'm really excited that we could be getting to this place now.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:14:00]:
Right. I think it's so beautiful. I think you're probably the first time we've ever had an artistic director speak to this point. We often have dancers. Come on. I mean, Rebecca and I both feel that we come from that sort of idea, too, where maybe the original dream you had didn't pan out and then it turned into something even think. You know, we say if we had gotten into the companies that were our dream companies as kids, we don't think we would have been nearly as satisfied with the careers we had. So I think it's really inspiring to hear it from you that even it's not just about your performing career.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:14:36]:
Even later on, you can bend your aspirations and then find something more beautiful than you expected.
Adam Sklute [00:14:44]:
And for anyone, I agree with that. You need to follow the path that's given to know. Obviously for my early training, I wanted to be in New York City Ballet, and I probably could have gotten into New York City Ballet and had a pretty nice performing career, and that would have been it, in my opinion. I'm not a superstar dancer. I never was. I was a good dancer. I started late, so I was always struggling with technique, which was also a gift, I think, in the long run, as an artistic director. But then the Joffrey fell into my lap, and I had a hugely successful career, as well as one in leadership there.
Adam Sklute [00:15:23]:
I wanted to stay at the joffrey. This fell into my lap, and I said, Let me just follow this. And I did, and this was my path. And as I said, there's been not a single regret, and I've been very proud of the work that I could do here at Ballet West in the last 16 years. Wow.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:15:39]:
I want to kind of dig in a little bit more to the changes that you have made. We saw an interview that you did recently with our friends at Dance Data Project where you were talking about some of the repertoire and how you've made changes, and I just wonder how you've seen those changes reflect not only in the dancers, but also in your audiences.
Adam Sklute [00:15:58]:
Yeah, this is such a strange conversation for me to have, because it's a really hard one to put your finger on. Exactly. Suffice to say that I think once you really build quality and exciting and interesting stuff, no matter what it is that your audiences will come, I think that that's really the ultimate goal, because they will trust you. They come because they trust that it's Ballet West, not just because it's The Nutcracker or Swamp Lake, although we have those audiences that come back there, too. Ballet west has had and one of the gifts that I got here from Ballet West is that it has had five. I'm the fifth artistic director in its 60 year history. So from its founding with Willem Christensen, then taken over by Bruce Marks, then to Sir John Hart, to Jonas Colgate, and then to me, and each one of us has shaped and molded the repertoire in our own way. What I'd like to think I did was, because I am a historian, I won't deny that I took the history and the legacy of the company.
Adam Sklute [00:17:04]:
I used every single aspect that had been built on, so used that as a foundation, and then added to it not only with the kind of more joffrey style historical legacies, but also with new works. I'm really, really inspired by up and coming choreographers, and I want to give them a chance. And when I had arrived here, there had been no new choreography at Ballet West for nine years, so I knew I had to change that up. So these were big things that I was working on, was building that was building that was also building the diversity of the choreographer base and the dancer base, these were things that just weren't part of our history and our legacy. Putting more women, more people of color, more people of different ethnicities, not only on the stage, but also as choreographers and leaders. And I feel like I've been doing that for my entire leadership career because it's always been important to me. And what has happened is when it's good, little by little, more people come. So now we see a very diverse audience.
Adam Sklute [00:18:05]:
We actually have a very youthful audience at Ballet West, which is, again, a surprise when everybody's talking about people getting older and older. It's about balance. Choreographing, to me, is about balance. And I like to walk a balance between high art and popular entertainment. So I'm not too shy to do something like Dracula, just as I'm not too shy to make our audiences see something like The Green Table, just as I'm not shy about giving our audiences an opportunity to see something like Foresight's Blake works One or Emerging Choreographers, where we're going to take a chance, and it may be a flop, which we've had plenty of, as well as an immense hit and success. That balance is there so that when you're planning a menu, you've always got something for everybody. And that's really been my goal with programming. I try and stay as aware of current trends as possible.
Adam Sklute [00:19:10]:
Obviously, my own personal taste goes into that, but I try not to just jump on the bandwagon of the next name in choreography unless I think it's right for us because we've also created a very unique look and style. And that's something that I've always wanted for the company, too, is that people can immediately say, oh, they're Ballet West dancers. And I think that that also infuses how I program the to.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:19:42]:
So sorry. Go ahead, Rebecca.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:19:44]:
Well, I just want to ask about this is kind of random, but I'm curious about Breaking Point, the TV show that you guys did. If we could talk about that for a second, because Michael and I, when we were at Miami City Ballet, they tried to do a reality show on us for like, a second, and they realized very quickly that the dancers weren't going to give them any drama or anything because we were like, People will see this. We can't do that. And so I just wondered that had to have felt like a risk for you to do that. The show ended up being, I think, very interesting. It had two seasons, I believe, right, available on Amazon Prime. I realized today when I was looking up the year, if anyone wants to go watch it, tell us a little bit about that and what that felt like, to kind of put yourselves out there and give that a you know.
Adam Sklute [00:20:25]:
I've tried really hard to develop a really close working relationship with my artists and my artists at the time. We had a very good, friendly relationship about things. At least BBC International had been shopping around this potential. I'm not sure if that's the one that they tried, but a number of companies had basically said no to this and they wanted to come to us for a week to do a screen test. And I said to the dancers, could this hurt? What will be like? And they were like, well, let's give it a shot. And we just interviewed anyone who wanted to be interviewed, was allowed to be interviewed, and they interviewed about two thirds of the company. A third of people didn't want to be involved and that was fine and nobody was forced to be. And we just talked it on through and about a month later or so they came forward and said, if we are interested, they would love to follow our stories, that we had some very interesting individuals and individuals who weren't afraid to put themselves out there publicly.
Adam Sklute [00:21:37]:
And we talked a lot. Are we going to be okay with this? But in the long run we said, let's give it a chance because it could be really good for the company and for the art form. My greater goal was that this would be good for exposure of the art form. And I always said didn't do Breaking Point for the thousands upon thousands of people who love and know ballet. We did Breaking Point for the millions and millions of people who know nothing about ballet and hopefully we can then expose them in a way to it. So we had lofty goals for it and I think it went off really well. It was really difficult. It took us a long time to get used to.
Adam Sklute [00:22:17]:
There were a handful of us who were mic'd from dawn till dusk, who would have to get up at like five in the morning to go and do what we call the talking heads, just like we are now, talking about what's going on, which is part of reality sometimes. Talking about it before it happened and then reacting to what had happened. Sometimes it was all very weird, but we got into that. Some of the dancers got pigeonholed into characters that really don't represent who they are at all. They took a sort of gestalt of the company. They had Christiana Bennett, who was our senior principal ballerina. They had Beck Ancik who was up and coming. They had Alison DeBona who had been there.
Adam Sklute [00:22:59]:
And they kind of created characters that were basically based on who they were in the company, but then built on that to create a more interesting know. We we lived with it. We were okay with it. Allison had some trouble at first. She was like I mean, I hope you don't mind me saying, she was like, yeah, man, I got the bitch edit. That was what she know. But she after a while kind of relished it she was like, Fine, I'm just going to lean into it. I allow people in my house again.
Adam Sklute [00:23:31]:
My husband said, we're not allowing reality at home. That was his phrase. But I was really pleased with what we ended up doing. I'm proud of it. It was controversial because it wasn't always perfect, but nothing ever is. And it did more good for Ballet West than it did harm. So I'm very proud that we did.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:23:57]:
Yeah. Why don't we shift gears now to The Nutcracker, and perhaps you could start just by telling us a little bit about the historical aspect of this particular production.
Adam Sklute [00:24:08]:
Well, this ballet Willem Christensen's production of The Nutcracker is the very first full length version of The Nutcracker in America. Prior to that, America had only seen, like, the Tory Company, the Ballet Rousse, doing, like a Nutcracker Suite Act Two, or different variations in divertive small, and no one had produced a full version of it. Christensen, who was born and raised in Brigham City, Utah, then studied under folkin, and who was the same age as him at that, toured through the country in vaudeville with his brothers. One of their big dance numbers was the Russian Dance from The Nutcracker, and that we do to this day, that version.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:24:53]:
Wow.
Adam Sklute [00:24:54]:
Well, the expanded version that he produced when he put it on the company, he landed in San Francisco, where he founded the very first full ballet company in America, which was the San Francisco Ballet. And there he created America's first Swan Lake. America's first Copalia and America's first Nutcracker. It was during World War II, wartime, and he had a shoestring budget and he needed an upper for audiences at that time, and that's what he produced. And little by little, he added on it. In the early 1950s, he moved back to Salt Lake City. Interesting reasons, but he founded the first fully accredited ballet department in, I believe, the world, and that was the University of Utah's ballet department. Prior to that, ballet had just been part of the PE department.
Adam Sklute [00:25:42]:
So this was something early on, I think he became a little bored with running an academic institution and he started taking those dancers and building his own performing company. And one of the big things that he produced was The Nutcracker early on. So that was from the early 1950s. It predates so the choreography of it predates George Ballantine's version by ten years. And it started being produced right around the time that Balanchin maybe a little earlier. And so we still call it perhaps the longest running Nutcracker in the world because we still do this version. And with the exception of one year in 2020, it has been performed consistently. And I knew the history of it, and I love the history of it, and I was worried about the history of it.
Adam Sklute [00:26:30]:
Oh, is this going to look dated? Is this going to look old? No, that's what's so exciting, it's fresh, it's alive, it's fun. There's lots of dancing for everyone. It runs quickly and concisely. I think a lot of it has to do with Christensen's own background in vaudeville. So Act Two almost runs like a vaudeville show, one number after another number, as opposed it's very engaging and quite wonderful. In 2017, we underwent a facelift for it with all new sets and costumes, and I oversaw the production of that with the designers really choosing to stay true to the shape of it so that we could continue the choreography the way that Christensen had created it, but also make it more fanciful and updated. We have modified a couple of the variations, because what was being looked at in 1944 through a lens then is not really acceptable nowadays. And what I like to say is I really wanted every one of those variations to be a celebration of culture, not a mockery of culture, and particularly the Chinese dance.
Adam Sklute [00:27:46]:
We did something very interesting where we interpolated Willem Christensen's brother, Lou Christensen's version, which he had created actually he had redone in the early 1960s for the San Francisco Ballet, which was very much it was the first time, to my knowledge, that they had incorporated a Chinese dragon, one of those street dragons, into it. And now you see it a lot. But that was something that Lou Christensen had incorporated in the early 1960s, and so it was this warrior battling this Chinese dragon. I asked the Christensen family if we could interpolate Lou Christensen's version into Willem Christensen's production just to create a greater celebration. We did a lot of research on historical Chinese masks. So what the warriors wearing is an exact replica of historic Chinese masks. And I think the outcome was really great. In fact, members of the Asian American community here said that that turned from being their cringiest moment in The Nutcracker to their favorite moment in The Nutcracker.
Adam Sklute [00:28:52]:
And that meant an awful lot. So it's still a living, breathing thing. It's very much alive, but it's also very much preserved history in that way. And I think that that's what makes it so unique and so special.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:29:06]:
Right. I think that's so beautiful how creative you were able to be with that, rather than, I don't know, just having someone new come in and start from scratch. You're able to be historically respectful and how wonderful to even incorporate his brother's work in know, I think Nutcracker, it's easy to be cynical about it. A lot of dancers don't look forward to it. Rebecca and I are not like that. But can you just, I guess, give audiences, like, if you heard someone thinking like, oh, Nutcracker is a drag, and I don't want to go, what reason should someone go see West Nutcracker? What is magical about this particular production? Or why do you still love The Nutcracker and look forward to it?
Adam Sklute [00:29:52]:
Well, there are so many reasons. First of.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:29:56]:
All.
Adam Sklute [00:29:56]:
It's a quick and concise show. Christensen nutcracker runs 2 hours. Boom, it's over with one intermission in there. And so it's great for audiences that 21st century audiences that don't really have the time to sit through necessarily a two and a half hour, three hour program. But it has often been said that this was not Tchaikovsky's greatest ballet score. But I think it has some of his most beautiful and profound music in there. I still get choked up hearing the transformation at the height of the transformation. It's just like, awe inspiring.
Adam Sklute [00:30:31]:
The snow scene. Parts of it just move me, and the sugar plum cottade is just so heart stopping and never ceases to be beautiful music for me. So I think on that level, it's great. The production that we've put together is visually stunning. It takes place in the era of ETA Hoffman, so early 19th century, and the costumes are just so wonderful. They're a combination of period accurate and very fanciful. It's very colorful and it's exciting for kids. We have in act two, part of the new production has changed what used to be called Oriental servants into attendants.
Adam Sklute [00:31:15]:
And they're actually lemurs, so little kids are wearing these. And it's really fun because we also have little bumblebees that come out from underneath Mother ginger's skirt because she's a giant beehive. Historically, in the very first production of The Nutcracker, it ended with bees buzing around a beehive. In fact, that's why Rotmansky, himself, a great historian in ballet, incorporated bees into his version. We've done it in a slightly different way, but it's that same idea. So there's always something visual. It's funny. Audiences are roaring with laughter in the battle scene, the Mouse King is very, very funny.
Adam Sklute [00:31:56]:
In fact, there's a whole ad lib section where Christensen wanted the Mouse King to adlib. The very first time we went to the Kennedy Center with The Nutcracker, our Mouse King threw out something we'd never seen before. He all of a sudden started doing the Gangham Style whatever, and the audience fell apart. It was so funny. And then he's flossing at one point later on and just doing stuff, and it's become this joke. But it was something that Christensen always wanted. So we're always trying to work with that with integrity. But it's a lot of fun, so it's not slow.
Adam Sklute [00:32:37]:
I've never seen a party scene that moves as quickly and as brightly as this one and as engaging, because party scene can drag a little bit. And for all of these reasons, I think Christensen's Nutcracker is just such an exciting, fun filled, great introduction to people who've never seen ballet, but also really fulfilling and substantial for people who know and love ballet.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:33:01]:
I love that. Oh, my gosh. To be allowed to ad lib like that, that sounds so fun. It just really gives you life when you're on your 30th one.
Adam Sklute [00:33:08]:
Yeah. No, exactly. And I always wondered what did they do back in 44? What did they do in the 50s? What was he doing in that?
Michael Sean Breeden [00:33:15]:
Right.
Adam Sklute [00:33:16]:
That's so fun.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:33:17]:
I wonder, too, just for our listeners who aren't dancers, what kind of work do you guys do to preserve the choreography? So you have dancers that are doing it year after year. I'm sure you have repetitors that have been working with this production for so long, but just give us a little insight into that part of keeping the integrity of the choreography for all this time.
Adam Sklute [00:33:34]:
Yeah, well, I mean, we always go back through the archives. We stay connected very much with the Christensen family. Until very recently. We worked with Christensen's first rehearsal director, Benet Arnold, and she would oversee a lot of aspects of the production. When I said, maybe it's time to make a modification, we have a lot of people our archivist has actually been with the company since day one. He was a child, Bruce Caldwell, and he would often say, well, you know, in 1964 he did this. And so we're like, oh, let's try that this year. So we do modify things based but it's always based on what Christensen or the Christensen brothers have done.
Adam Sklute [00:34:20]:
Yes, we have dancers who know it well, but I also try and rotate casting as much as possible. We put on eight different casts of principals, and that ends up being however many casts of core based on the changes there. So it's a really great opportunity for a lot of the younger and less experienced dancers in the company to get principal roles. And so a lot of court of ally members are put in principal roles of the Nutcracker. It's, I think, also fresh because we don't have a lot of rehearsal time for it. When our fall program ends, we have one week of rehearsal time.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:35:02]:
Oh, wow.
Adam Sklute [00:35:06]:
And then we go on. And usually we introduce casts little by little while we're already performing. We'rehearsing other principal casts and that sort of thing. But it's a very quick, so it keeps it alive and fresh. Our rehearsal directors are really good, and I try and work with every single cast at every single level as much as I can.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:35:25]:
How often do tours of the Nutcracker happen? I know you've been to the Kennedy Center in the past with this production, but is this something common for Nutcracker in it's?
Adam Sklute [00:35:37]:
Yeah, I think the Nutcracker is our most often requested touring work. We've toured to the Kennedy Center. This will be our fourth trip back to the Kennedy Center with the Nutcracker since I've been here. And then we've gone to Anchorage, Alaska. We've gone to a couple of other places. So it's often requested, I think, for a mid sized company, I think we actually are relatively lean and mean when it comes to costs. So I think that's what makes us attractive. But yeah, so the Nutcracker tour is a great deal.
Adam Sklute [00:36:13]:
We actually tour a lot for a company our size. This year alone, we went to an Arpino Festival in Chicago, where we performed there. We're going to Kennedy Center with Nutcracker. We're going back to the Kennedy Center in June with our Choreographic Workshop pieces, which is called Asian Voices, and it's celebrating Asian choreographers, composers, and designers and, yeah, a couple of other places too. So for a company our size, we actually do get to tour a lot, and I think that that's a really great thing, because that's what helps keep our name and our brand out there.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:36:56]:
Right. I feel like that's something that's been really integral to your tenure as artistic director, that you've really helped brand the company. I think what you said about being able to recognize a Bally West dancer I think is very true. I don't know if I can. I mean, other than just being, like, tall and leggy and elegant and beautiful. But there are other aspects to it. Because I think when you talk about demands of the rep, you mentioned Forsyth and Najinska and, of course, the classics, and you guys do balance sheet all the time, and there are very specific demands in the Rep. I guess I'm wondering, how do you pick dancers, then? How do you find someone that's going to fit the aesthetic of the company, but also meet the demands of the width of the repertoire?
Adam Sklute [00:37:47]:
Well, thank you. Just like planning a repertoire, there's that intangible thing that is hard to always put your finger on. And, yes, I appreciate that you're calling them tall and beautiful and elegant, and I like to think so, too. But we have dancers of lots of different sizes and shapes, and that's part of my joy as well. Yes, we run on the tall side. Our shortest women are five foot four, and our shortest men are five foot eight or nine, and our tallest women are 6ft and are three of them, and our tallest men are six foot six. So, yes, we do run on the taller side, but within that, there's a big spectrum of people and body types, which is very important to celebrate, in my opinion. Ultimately, it's about a movement quality.
Adam Sklute [00:38:34]:
It's about approach. I won't deny that I like line and that our dancers are very linear in that respect. But the biggest thing that I've worked hard to instill in all of them and continue to build is stylistic integrity. Deep, deep appreciation and work to work within the style of whichever choreographer or piece of work we're doing. You know, I jokingly said one season in February, we did Ashton Cinderella, and that had a very specific Royal Ballet style. And in April, we did Balanchin's Jewels, and that had also an extremely different stylistic approach. And I expected our artists to approach each one of them that way. And as time has gone on, more and more of them really get it.
Adam Sklute [00:39:34]:
So when I'm picking dancers. And the other thing I love is we're actually training more and more dancers. About 90% of the company comes out of Ballet West Two.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:39:45]:
Wow.
Adam Sklute [00:39:46]:
So I usually like to pick them at a younger age. And now we're seeing 50% of that coming up out of the school that we have dancers. I just hired three dancers who, 16 years ago, when I started, were what we called the Little Buttercups because they were little yellow leotards and they were just skipping around the studio. They are now young adults and they were just hired for the main company and doing very, very well. So my goal was always to try and build from the ground up and to build that stylistic integrity within them. So I spend an awful lot of time with our faculty, with our staff, to really get them to understand the kind of detail work that's important to me. And then, as I said, there's that intangible thing. I like magical artists that move me.
Adam Sklute [00:40:32]:
Sure. Of course, everybody loves a lot of pirouettes and high legs and big jumps and things. I'll never say no to that. And of course I want dancers who can do that. But that's not the ultimate goal. It really isn't. Some of my greatest dancers were people who in class, you might have seen them and they had fine, adequate technique, but on stage they became magical creatures that could surpass all expectations in terms of their approach to art. They went beyond themselves.
Adam Sklute [00:41:06]:
And that's actually my goal for everything, is we have to go to a different realm in the ballet, either in the studio or on the stage. People aren't coming just to see pedestrian people. They're coming to see something more than what they see in real life, whether that's artists acting like pedestrian people or not. But it's about a higher place that our job is to take them to. And that's what I look for, is that those people that have that commitment, not just people who have a perfect fifth and beautiful legs and feet or a million pirouettes I won't say no to that, as I said, but that's not my goal and that's not what I look for the most. It's really that depth of integrity.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:41:51]:
Right.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:41:52]:
So I wonder, you've listed quite a few things and accomplishments that you're very proud of already with the company. So in the next 16 years, what are some of your other goals that you have for the company moving forward?
Adam Sklute [00:42:03]:
I really, really am. We've actually started discussing embarking on a capital campaign to really help build this further. But I really, really want to be able to produce have the freedom financially to produce more large scale works. We produce lots and lots of small works by emerging choreographers. I want to be able to produce more large scale works and take a chance. Take a chance. Because you know what? That's how we got nutcracker. That's how we got Sleeping Beauty, that's how we got Swan Lake, is because they took a chance on a big, large scale work.
Adam Sklute [00:42:35]:
And, for instance, Cracker was a flop when it first came out. But I want that ability to do that. And that comes with building the finances and building an endowment for that type of work. I want more people from around the world to see Ballet West and to appreciate the artistry of our artists and what we can give. So, again, it's about creating the ability to help us get to more international venues because it's very expensive. And these days, the companies that do that kind of international touring, they subsidize their own touring in many ways, and we're just not there yet. But that is a goal that I want. Of course, I will always entertain outside, auditioners, and, in fact, always do and look very carefully and still, always, every year, bring at least a couple if I have space from outside.
Adam Sklute [00:43:29]:
But I want the majority of our pipeline to come exclusively from our school so that we're producing dancers and that those dancers, anywhere they go in the world would be known. You could see Ballet West's brand on them and see the kind of training that we've built in them. And so my goal is for the school to have 100% placement every year from the top levels, graduating levels, whether it's Ballet West or wherever. And so we all work hard to do that. But we're not there yet either. There are lots and lots of things internally that I want to see. I want to keep on building on our diversity, whatever that means, on so many levels, because that means so many things in so many ways. But as our city, we are in the fastest growing city in America, and that's very exciting.
Adam Sklute [00:44:23]:
And as our city grows and our demographics grow, I want to produce work and put people on the stage that represent the world around us and let people see a reflection of themselves more and more. So we keep on building on that. But I recognize it takes time. It took us 16 years to get to this place, even though there had been a wonderful 40 something year of history prior to that. So you ask about the next 16 years. I try and think, I take the long game. I'm not just going to jump on what is fashionable right now. Maybe if it's ballot west, but not automatically.
Adam Sklute [00:45:00]:
I have to make sure that it grows. So these are just some of the more the goals that I would love. I still feel very inspired here. The sky's the limit here. And that, I think, is always what's so exciting.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:45:15]:
That's such a beautiful way to end this interview. We hope that everyone in the DC area will come check you guys out for nutcracker and then later for your return, later in the season. And if you're in the Salt Lake City area, of course, check out all the wonderful work you'll be doing throughout this 23 24 season. Adam, thank you so much for joining us today. It was such a pleasure.
Adam Sklute [00:45:34]:
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:45:43]:
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